


Belief

by feyrelay



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arthur Knows About Merlin's Magic (Merlin), Canon Era, F/M, I Don't Even Know, M/M, POV Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Reincarnation, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 05:28:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19882399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyrelay/pseuds/feyrelay
Summary: You know that excitement you hear in your loved one's voice when they talk about something so dear to them... that sheer, raw belief that makes you want to share in it too, even when you know nothing about it? It's a kind of magic in its own right.





	Belief

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen literally 3 hours of this show, tops. I don't even go here. I tried my best, y'all.
> 
> There is like one throwaway line each hinting at Arthur/Morgana and Arthur/Gwen, but it's not the focus of the story. It's meant as a background framework against which to contextualize his affection for Merlin.

Merlin has magic. (Merlin _does_ magic, _is_ magic, within the castle walls even.)

Arthur knows this, because he may very well be a troublemaker in a chevalier’s clothing, but. Like recognizes like.

And Merlin is a troublemaker, too. This is what his father tells him, though Arthur is inclined to believe the little servant is merely _fun_.

(But Arthur always believes what he is told.)

***

For a while, his secret knowledge of Merlin’s powers is enough. All is well, because no matter how many times he catches that gleam in Merlin’s eye, Arthur manages not to spill the secret.

He keeps it for himself, like a stolen inhale of the perfumed tincture that he never got to smell on his mother’s skin. The bottle had sat, though—on a side table in his father’s chambers—for years of his childhood, until the hours of sunlight it got from the nearby east-facing window had soured it. Arthur had finally rinsed clean the crystal, keeping it for himself. The cork stopper still retains a bit of scent to it, one he rations.

Everyone everwhere, friends and foes alike, think Arthur the eternal idiot. They think he’s incapable of being careful with anything, but he can be careful with things he cares about.

Is it his fault that there are so few people worthy? Absolutely not.

Merlin, though, he’s not made that way. _They really cracked the crucible with him_ , Arthur thinks. Merlin seems to care about everyone and everything, all at once. Everyone except Arthur. It represents a challenge. He needs to figure out why exactly Merlin thinks himself above the future king. Then he’ll turn him in himself.

Although Arthur can’t say exactly why Merlin should merit such consideration, really. He ought to turn him in right away, but. Curiosity clipped the dragon’s wings, and all that.

What a pain in the arse.

***

The thing is, Arthur grows bored easily, always has. He can’t stand a stationary target, a goalpost that never gets moved. He can’t abide it, and neither can his father. Uther seems so content with everything to always stay the same, except Arthur. Arthur is the only one for whom stability never seems good enough, in his father's eyes. He always must do more. 

He needs to be better.

Keeping just the one secret, after a time, makes him bored. He’s the king’s son; he should never be bored.

He gets another secret. Two is a better number than one. At first, he thinks to bother Morgana, and make her tell him something, something he can own. But their little games always end the same way, with him helping her—shaking fingers and all—into her dress.

It’s a bit of a joke, really. He needs, supposedly, Merlin to dress him, to put every buckle and fastening in place for him. And yet, chivalry demands he help his lover into her things like a common maid.

She helps him before the tournament, just this once, but it’s not the same. He doesn’t like the little smile, how sweet and false she’s being. It’s the same smile she’s always giving his father.

He doesn’t like it.

***

He takes the maid away, and he can’t say with any certainty whether he’s so keen because she is beloved by her mistress or beloved by his servant.

He witnesses his father’s ire and thinks through Morgana’s logical challenge, meanders to the thought of his manservant blacking his boots. Why would he do this, if he were a sorcerer? The question begs as Gwen does, on her knees. Arthur doubts his information for the first time. Truly, how can he know Merlin’s eyes do not always gleam like that when the situation is most dire?

(Most enthralling.)

Then the bastard goes and admits it. Arthur gives him the first excuse he can think of.

(Love is quite the excuse, anyway.)

***

It does get harder and harder, though. Time passes, and Morgana is not the same. Arthur is not the same, either.

He finds another to have a secret with—a stable boy—but it’s unsatisfying. The boy is not his equal, not his better, and not because he’s a stable boy, but because the first thing that comes out of the boy’s mouth once Arthur’s cock is free of it, is praises and rambling swearing of fealty, and finally a tacked-on diatribe against enchantment that could be verbatim from his father’s lips.

Arthur doesn’t see him again. It’s far too dangerous, anyway.

***

Soon, though, a secret kept is not a big enough achievement. Not even through all the strain Merlin puts on everyone’s disbelief. 

Arthur is getting tired of pretending to be stupid. Well. He _is_ stupid. He knows that; he’s been told.

But he’s getting tired of pretending to be _blind._ (And deaf. And dumb. And feckless. And _heartless_ -)

Arthur, in secret, hires a magic tutor. It takes him an age to find someone since he is who he is. But then again, maybe it would have taken longer, without his connections. It’s something he’s never pondered. Perhaps he should have. 

The old man is a bit of a hack, Arthur suspects, but he was the only one in three principalities who was willing. And, regardless of how his suspicions are raised, the magic does seem to work.

He’s taught a spell to calm bad dreams. He chooses the candle just so, finds one made of the highest quality tallow available. The shop woman seems flustered to have the prince in her establishment and tells him the fat of the candle came from a milk-white calf that her daughter had named Moon before the poor thing had broken its leg playing. The candle has been milled in with bits of lavender, which Arthur has been told plenty a time cures lack of sleep.

He buys it and carves Merlin’s name in it. The flecks of purple suit the curves of the letters.

He doesn’t know if it makes his friend’s dreams sweeter, but Merlin seems in greater spirits since receiving the gift, and when the candle has burned down to a puddle of wax, Arthur replaces it. Merlin seems relieved, his eyes bright from what _must_ be greater and calmer rest each night.

Arthur goes back for his next sorcery lesson, three towns over.

***

The next lesson he learns has to do with forgetting things. He wonders, since forgetfulness is a negative trait, if this charm could technically be termed a curse.

Does it matter, really, if he only intends to use it on himself?

He wants to forget what he saw, he wants to forget what he knows of Merlin’s meetings with the new baker, the pretty and strong one who heaves entire planks of loaves around the hearth room. The moist bread, hot and fresh, sticks in rows to the hewn wood, before it cools. Merlin’s eyes stick to the baker boy and the flour in the miscreant’s blond hair.

While his servant is off doing that, Arthur sneaks into Merlin’s chamber and scrapes the wax from around the candle he’d given him, what’s already been burnt. He steals a dark few hairs from the little comb that he thinks was Gwen’s intervention for Merlin’s mop.

He melts down his pilfered wax and twines the hair in it and makes himself a ring, images of the baker boy’s smile flashing in his mind. Arthur makes sure the fragile wax and the hair twine around his ring finger unobtrusively even as he pours all his ire into his craft, wanting it to stick, wanting it to work, wanting to be able to let go. With any luck, he’ll only have to wear it for a few days.

By the time the ring falls off, he’s told, he’ll have forgotten.

(He does, but the spell says nothing of his newly faulty memory being patched over with new pain. It’s Arthur’s fault; he should have figured as much.)

Merlin moves on to the blacksmith’s new apprentice, Gwen’s fair friend. The baker is forgotten by everyone.

Arthur’s hands, without his little wax ring, are far too clean. He bloodies them up a bit, to fix that.

***

It’s then necessary that he be tutored in healing spells, particularly to mend broken bones. Gwen’s family business can’t persist with an apprentice with broken ribs.

(What makes Gwen sad, makes Merlin sad, and Arthur too. He should have thought of that, too.)

This spell is a little different, and Arthur imagines it must be because it’s manipulating the body and not just the misty reaches of the mind. Honestly, he would have thought magic would be much more… serious. He’d pictured strange incantations in another language, maybe sigils or potions. Not these… superstitious remedies. He feels like a wife. (Doesn't hate the feeling.)

And yet, when Arthur makes a gift of the tightest-woven linen to the battered apprentice, fortune does indeed favor him. He leaves the cloth with the boy and—in keeping with the spell—says not a word for or against his own case. His tutor had explained that sometimes apologies were not strictly welcomed by the receiver until much time had passed, and also that healing spells may take magical affront, if they felt they were being helped along by honeyed words.

So Arthur keeps silent, and nearly rushes headlong into Merlin on his way out of the blacksmith’s. He opens his mouth to apologize, nearly shattering his own spell, but stops himself. (Stupid, stupid.)

Merlin looks him over as he dusts himself off, but Arthur only gives him a tight nod, tilting his head at the pile of linen that Arthur has painted invisibly with healing sigils, in the juices of precious lemon and everyday, but powerful apple. 

“Ah, perfect for compressive bandaging,” his friend grants him, voice warming, apparently from the shock of running into Arthur here.

Arthur flees, but the next time he sees his victim, he seems to have recovered well. Merlin seems pleased.

His gold, both at his tutor’s and at the spinner’s, has been well spent.

***

It has been rather a lot of gold, though, even for a royal. He’s not in charge of the realm’s coin yet, not really.

And the old man he’s learning from seems to ask for more every time, always seems to have some new ailment or expense that he bemoans to Arthur towards the end of their secret meetings, just before Arthur goes for his purse.

Arthur, thinking on it, finds it would be wise to stagger their meetings a bit more, anyway, to avoid attracting the attention that always seems to come from following a regular pattern.

He saves up, slowly, over time. He does some simple sums, nothing too complex that would be out of his purview. Arthur has a suspicion that the next lesson will cost him even more than the last, which is fine, but he intends to get a good value.

He knows what he wants to ask, what he wants most in all the world, but he—unwisely, incongruously—hopes that the doing of it is rather difficult. It’s just, Arthur would like to feel that he’s earned it. He’d like to know that it’ll work, because he imagines the waiting will be excruciating otherwise.

Everything else he’s done could almost have been done by accident, by any common peasant who happened to be very intentional with their household purchases. But for his next trick, Arthur would appreciate a bit of spark or flame, a bit of maelstrom to confirm his spell will work.

(That his wish will come true. Please.)

When he tells his tutor this, Arthur is met with mirth. 

“Aye, it’ll be a love spell then, if yer feelin’ so strong about it, eh, little Lord?”

He bristles. “No, no, I’d never- well, maybe, but no. I don’t want… this person to fall in love with me, I just want to be able to find… them.” Arthur only narrowly avoids saying ‘him’.

“Find ‘im? Boy, you don’t need me to be making up a spell for you for that. Just have your fancy guardsmen hunt ‘im down.”

“No, I mean… in the future, or in heaven. In whatever happiness awaits us, after this life,” he explains.

The tutor eyes him, which is unnerving. The man’s only got the one eye to begin with, you see. “Why not make yer own happiness now, soon-to-be-King?”

He’s thought about the answer to this quite a bit. “This world is incompatible with my love’s happiness. Many would say… this person… is incompatible with this world instead, but I…” Arthur stops. He’s never admitted this to anyone before. “I would work it into shape, until it is wrought to his frame, truly I would. But I know what happens to kings who try to bend the world too far, who try to make the crown fit their head instead of merely rest on top. I’m afraid that we won’t have time. So, you see, what I want is… another chance. In a different world, or the afterlife. I won’t ask for too much. I won’t be spoilt as I have been now; I’m not an idiot, I’m _not_. He does not have to love me, he only has to find me.”

He is emptied out and has neither water nor wine left in him after such a revealing display. Arthur’s fight is over.

It makes it easy for the man to dump the future king out of his doorstep, lighter by one full purse, and with no spell to show for it. All he gets for his gold is a curse of Sodomite, and not the magical kind of curse either. He does not get that dignity, of a curse wefted to his person through might, no. This one is hocked at him as spit.

He was being stupid, to come here. He was being weak.

(Perhaps Arthur, too, is incompatible with this world.)

***

Days before Arthur is set to marry Gwen, he is given a gift from some far-flung relative. They are scraps of script his mother sent in her missives. Some are personal, some impersonal. She was, unfortunately, not a terribly learned woman, at least not in the common tongue. Some of the letters are in her native tongue, from the islands… and seem to be longer; he’ll have to mount a search for a translator.

She speaks of the sea often, and when he finally finds someone who can read for him, her words are full of water that fills him up with both melancholy and good humor.

From beyond the grave, she speaks of a sea change, of how she does indeed fear love, especially the love of men for her beauty, which has taken her from her island home. She fears childbirth and death, who she describes as twins who hold hands. She fears being separated from this world, but explains, too, the importance of remembering how life tends to… _cling,_ in both blood and water. She says that soon her son will be born in a rush of both across the linens of the birthing bed.

She says—the interpretation losing something of what Arthur chooses to believe was once poetry—that there is nothing new in this world; the same waves wash over the shores and cliffs as have always done so, and the sea never forgets a thing, never gives away anything to the land or sky that it won’t take back, one day in water of river, or lake, or the wide wide ocean, when the mists roll in and the spraying, spitting rain falls.

Arthur believes it. He has to. And he tells Merlin, in a snatched moment as he dresses for his wedding bed, to remember to bring his body to the lake, should he ever fall.

“I vow it,” Arthur is told.

(Arthur always believes what he is told.)

"Thank you."

***

A thousand and a half years later, it rains. It pours. Enter tempest and enter maelstrom, as requested.

A great, rare blond grizzly shouts its victory on a hill by the sea (the _other_ sea), redwoods behind it and the future in front of it and somewhere nearby there is a wind in a door that sends a draft to a young man who shivers and meets for the first time his new old friend. 

Once and again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments would be very much appreciated, as always!


End file.
